Reading and Phonics

Reading at Four Lanes Infant School

Intent

At Four Lanes Infant School we want to foster a love of reading.  We recognise that reading is a key priority and use books to form the drivers for our curriculum.  We believe that reading is a key life skill and as such we are dedicated to supporting our pupils on their journey to become lifelong readers. It is our intention to ensure that by end of their time at Four Lanes Infant School, pupils are confident with their phonics knowledge, allowing them to read with confidence and fluency.  They will be able to transfer their reading skills across the curriculum and be able to enjoy a range of different text types including fiction, non – fiction and poetry.

Implementation

At Four Lanes Infant School we recognise that systematic, high quality phonics teaching is essential.  Therefore all members of staff are fully trained in our chosen phonics scheme, Little Wandle for Letters and Sounds revised.  Phonics sessions take place daily in all year groups. We recognise that not all children can keep up with the pace of a phonics programed and therefore deliver additional planned daily catch up and support sessions for those pupils that are identified as needed additional practice to further embed their phonic knowledge and fluency. 

In order to practice and apply their phonics skills, children take part in group reading sessions three times a week.  During these sessions children read books that are matched to their own phonics ability meaning that all children can feel successful as readers. The three sessions are all planned carefully around each book and allow the children to practice the skills of decoding, prosody and comprehension. 

In addition to group reading sessions each year group also have whole class reading sessions, where texts are carefully selected to support the teaching of key reading skills. During these sessions children have the opportunity to discuss and engage with a range of books. They are encouraged to develop their own thoughts and feeling about different books and have multiple opportunities to share their views within the whole class reading sessions through role play, retelling the story and reviewing elements of the book.

In order to promote the love of reading within our school each day the children have a designated story time that allows them to hear a range of stories from our ever changing reading spine. This allows them to develop a love for reading as they build an internal library from hearing a range of books.  We prioritise weekly visits to the school library where children can select a book to take home for the week based on their interests. Our librarian offers a range of reading competitions and events that the children can take part in e.g. snuggle with a story event & read in a random place challenge to further promote a love for reading both at home and school.

Impact

Reading at Four Lanes Infant School is assessed in various ways.  Reading practice sessions are assessed each session by the adult leading the group. Verbal feedback is given to the children so that they are aware of their own progress and next steps and notes are recorded for the class teacher, and in the Reading Diary for parents to know how to support their child at home.  Assessment for Learning is used throughout each phonics lessons.  Teachers skilfully target graphemes and key words at children to ensure progress.  Little Wandle for Letters and Sounds revised has created their own phonics assessments, which take place at the end of each half term.  These are individual assessments that assess children’s grapheme phoneme correspondence, their ability to blend and read fully decodable words and also their recognition of key words.  The outcomes of these directly impact the decodable book that the children read.  These Little Wandle assessments are used from the beginning of Year R until such time in Year 2 that the children are no longer learning phonics.  Once the children have completed the phonics programme they progress onto colour banded books, where the teacher listens for fluency and understanding before they move onto the next colour level. This is supported by the Teacher Assessment Framework for Year 2.   Throughout whole class reading sessions, teachers and LSA’s use AFL to assess which children are meeting the planned learning outcomes, and teachers plan subsequent lessons to support the gaps in the children’s knowledge.  Year R children are also assessed through their self-initiated learning in both their inside and outside provision.